About Me

I worked at the World's Biggest Bookstore in Toronto for 10 years, until it closed in 2014. During my time there I planned themed endcaps and did author interview displays.
From September 2010 until December 2012 I contributed book reviews and New Author Spotlight posts to SF Signal. From August 2013 to May 2014 I did a Recommended Reading with Professionals column there once or twice a month.
I've got a BA in Medieval History from the University of Toronto.
I'm a long time crafter and have been card crafting for a few years, first using photos I took and now using lots of stamps and fun embellishments.
Contact me at:
jessica.strider (at) gmail (dot) com

Book Review Requests

I'm trying to reduce the number of physical books cluttering my bookshelves and floor, so I won't be accepting many new review books. I'm also being much harsher than usual when reading, giving books about 50 pages to wow me before I move on to the next one.

If I finish the book I will review it. Positive reviews are posted around the web (Amazon.ca, Goodreads, and LibraryThing). Negative reviews are only posted to my blog.

Thursday, 12 April 2012

This post is in belated response to all the hoopla that comes up over and over again about female authors and awards, etc. It goes along with the guest post I've done for Fantasy Cafe (which is now up, so go and check it out). Unlike most of my reading lists, which are endcap displays at the store where I work, this was a list I put together for my blog, by walking through the aisles and writing down every female SF writer I could find. I know I've missed a lot (as not all authors are still in print, some still use pseudonyms and so many authors are going the epublishing route nowadays), so feel free to mention other authors in the comments.

In the case of romantic SF, I'm linking to the list I did a few months ago and adding a few names here that aren't on that list. And if you want Dystopian, check out the reading list I did for that.

I tried to categorized authors but apologize for any mistakes I might have made. The only places I doubled names were to flesh out Time Travel and Alternate History and in one case Series (if an author wrote one of those as well as another category).

My hard SF list is purposefully small, as it's hard to judge the accuracy of the science and if the book revolves around a specific scientific idea without reading it. So these are books that I'm pretty sure are hard SF, but I'm also pretty sure there will be hard SF books in my general SF category.

As you can see from this long yet incomplete list, there are a lot of women writing science fiction. Seems a shame more of them aren't remembered come award time.

25 comments:

Ah, thanks. I checked a few of my authors (ones with initials) but I couldn't check them all. I assumed "Dani" was the female spelling (as I only know one Dani and she's female). Thanks for pointing this out. I'll remove them from the list. :)

For those folks interested in a huge selection of science fiction romance books/novellas (most of which are written by women), I run a blog called The Galaxy Express where I cover this subgenre at length: thegalaxyexpress.net.

I'd like to question the format of representing each author by only one title when so many have produced so many varied works. By listing just one title, aren't we in danger of caricaturing writers of breadth?

If listing a single title is meant to epitomize an author's work, particularly in a feminist context, then I'd like to suggest Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness in favor of her (notably superb) The Word for World is Forest.

@ Paul - I'm not trying to pick a definitive work for each author, I'm just picking one book as I don't have time to write out everything each author has written. I figure if readers are interested in an author, they'll find out what else she's written and choose a book that matches their tastes.

Jessica, my work is either hard sf or general sf. I very much appreciate the cross-over to the romance audience, but they are quite clear that they consider what I write hardcore sf and don't classify it as romance.

Marketing at my various publishers puts it under hard SF, space adventure, or more rarely military sf. Depending on your interest, I'd suggest one of the following

It always struck me as strange that works such as Primary Inversion, which depend on more hard science or mathematics than 99% of other SF books are often ignored in that aspect because they also include plot-lines that involve the emotions of human relationships. I mean, good lord, I had a paper published in the American Journal of Physics based on the relativistic science that I use in Primary Inversion.

Part of the reason I support and speak out about the interest that my books have stirred among romance readers is because the stereotypes about romance are never going to change unless authors who write other genres speak in support of the readers they have from other genres.

You're looking for alternative history? Add "Secrets of Jin Shei" and "Embers of heaven" to the list. Looking for Science-based YA? The new series under the umbrella title The Were Chronicles ("Random,", out now, "Wolf", out in May 2015, and "Shifter", later in 2015 or early in 2016)actually goes into the science and the genetics of Were-kind. ALl these books by Alma Alexander, who should be on this list.

In the bookselling context that I'm using here "series" refers to books based on movies, video games, TV shows, etc. In other words, books that often have different authors writing in someone else's created world. Forgotten Realms and Dragon Lance would be series books. Books by the same author that tell one story over several volumes are a series, but are shelved under their general category (science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, etc.). The use of the same word for different things has caused confusion in annoying ways, both for bookstore customers and staff.